Fondazione Zeffirelli onlus
WhatsApp Chat Get tickets

Melodrama? Born in Florence in 1600

It is 1600, and Medici Florence is preparing to celebrate the wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV of France. On the sidelines of the many lavish performances organized to celebrate the great event, there is the staging of Eurydice , with a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini and music by Jacopo Peri. It is the oldest opera that has come down to us. It is the birth of Melodrama.

Fondazione Zeffirelli onlus
Paris is worth a mass

Eurydice was performed on October 6, 1600, in the theater of the Pitti Palace on the occasion of the wedding of Maria de’ Medici and Henry IV of France. The scenic apparatus was by Bernardo Buontalenti.

The ending, too bitter and unhappy, certainly not suitable for a wedding feast, was modified. In fact, originally Orpheus loses his beloved forever by failing to rescue her from the Underworld. In the revised plot instead, the unhappy Orpheus will return to the Underworld accompanied by Venus who will convince the gods to return Eurydice to her beloved husband.

Origins: the Camerata de' Bardi and theatrical experimentation.

But what is the environment in which the work is born and who are its fathers? Florence between 1500 and 1600 was a hotbed of activity, intellectual movements and experimentation, the place where the greatest artists of the day had the opportunity to work and bring their works to life.

The Camerata de’ Bardi was a cultural circle headed by Giovanni de’ Bardi, Count of Vernio, a man of arms and intellectual. The group included theorists, poets, and musicians of the caliber of Vincenzo Galilei, father of the astronomer Galileo Galilei, Giulio Caccini, Pietro Strozzi, and many others.

The followers of the Camerata de’ Bardi intended to restore ancient Greek tragedy. Iconographic research and available sources had amply demonstrated that the tragedies were entirely sung. The goal, therefore, was to develop an appropriate musical and recitative style that could cadence current speech and singing: recitar cantando. Thus the doors of Melodrama were opened.

Camerata de' Bardi's first success: the intermediates of the Pellegrina

Camerata de’ Bardi finally has the opportunity to plan the event that will remain a milestone in the history of Western theater and music. It is 1589, the year of the wedding of Ferdinand I and Christina of Lorraine.

La Pellegrina, a comedy by Girolamo Bargagli, will thus be staged in the Uffizi’s Teatro Mediceo for the celebration of the great event. Between acts, there are 6 interludes dealing with “The Power of Music.” These are short compositions performed between acts of the plays to interrupt the often very long and even boring performance.

The Camerata de’Bardi thus had the opportunity to experiment through the Intermediates with the introduction of monodic pieces (the new style that would be the basis of melodrama), in a process of collective creation by all the participants in the lively circle of intellectuals. What happened in that performance would form the model for what would become a norm in stage staging throughout Europe over the next two hundred years. It is a triumph of spectacularity: a riot of stage machinery and apparitions in Bernardo Buontalenti’s phantasmagorical staging.

Fondazione Zeffirelli onlus
Jacopo Peri, from the more informal Daphne to Eurydice.

Jacopo Peri, known as “lo Zazzerino” because of the way he wore his hair, had composed and performed the part of Arione, the mythical Greek cantor, in the marine intermezzo of La Pellegrina in 1589.

In 1597 it was he who wrote the music for Daphne to a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. This is the first real opera written in history, the first example of a melodrama that was performed in Iacopo Corsi’s house.

Daphne is in fact a sequel to the third intermezzo of the Pellegrina. Apollo struck by Eros’s arrow falls in love with the nymph Daphne, who, however, rejects him. The ending appears as a goliardic warning to maidens too reluctant to indulge in love: Daphne will sadly be turned into a laurel tree to escape Apollo’s morbid love!

The perfection of opera with Monteverdi

The 1600 experimentation with Eurydice, however, remains a side production, never fully understood and appreciated in its immense value by the Medici Court.

Instead, it was Claudio Monteverdi a few years later, in 1607, who brought melodrama to perfection at the Gonzaga Court. In the salons of the Ducal Palace, the “Divin Claudio” in fact staged Orfeo to a libretto by Alessandro Striggio.

Zeffirelli's Eurydice in 1960.

On June 28, 1960, Franco Zeffirelli staged Jacopo Peri’s Eurydice at the Boboli Gardens, in front of the Neptune Fountain: “The staging of Eurydice presented no particular problems for me, because the opera had originally been conceived as a grand spectacle to celebrate the marriage between Maria de’ Medici and the French ”dauphin.” Three hundred and sixty years later, we presented it again in what had been its original theater, the Medici Palace, now the Pitti Palace. Piero Tosi came from Rome to work with me, and he created costumes of rare beauty: we felt we were paying homage to our hometown for all that it had taught us.”

Fondazione Zeffirelli onlus

Fondazione Zeffirelli onlus Subscribe to the newsletter

Stay up to date! By subscribing to our newsletter you will receive all the latest news and information on events and activities organized by the Zeffirelli Foundation.



    View Privacy Policy